Re: Civ 6 Nerds How do we feel about the game?

You can get the base game for $12 for trying Humble Bundle's monthly subscription thing. Though part of me thinks I should just keep waiting until a couple expansions come out and they bundle them together.

Some of the new mechanics sound interesting in this one. They are adding a Dark Ages mechanic whereas you have an era score and if yours is too low you enter a Dark Age, with the risk reward benefit of being more likely to enter a Golden Age if you do well during a Dark Age.

They are adding a city loyalty mechanic that sort of reminds me of the way culture worked in Civ 4. Cities on the borders of your empire are susceptible to influence from other civs or from neglect. I really liked that mechanic so it's cool to see it return in some form.

They are adding governors. I understand this mechanic the least so far. Probably meant to play into the new loyalty mechanic.

Finally they are adding emergencies. When major events happen in the world, players can be given joint quests to deal with them.

Re: Civ 6 Nerds How do we feel about the game?

They used to perform all the time on campus, and I enjoyed going to listen. I graduated a short time before their first world championship streak (they played for the grad ceremonies too), but they were still very, very good.

The university is named after the Scottish explorer that explored much of British Columbia, so it made sense to start a pipe band there. Our sports teams are even named the Clan (formerly Clansmen), which gets us all kinds of confused comments from Americans (we play in the NCAA Divison II, not the Canadian version, U Sports). Meet our mascot, McFogg the Dog:

Re: Civ 6 Nerds How do we feel about the game?

I didn't get the expansion, but I did get the base game. Most of the new mechanics are fantastic on multiple levels. I like the visual feedback on what I am doing, and I like the added choices they provide. I already knew I would like the "cartoony" graphics, I think it gives them more character, but I was also surprised to find that I enjoyed Sean Bean far more than I thought I would as well. His leader intros in particular are pretty great.

If there is one single failing grace about this game, it's that the AI is absolutely toothless. I don't think I've ever had such an easy time in Civ single player before. It's so bad that I wonder if my cpu is somehow to blame.

First game I played they never once declared war on me, even when I was about to win a fumbling culture victory. In later games they did declare war on me, but rarely ever sent more than a few units. I eventually discovered I could make them capitulate half their empires in peace negotiations. When I did, I realized they were barely building up their lands at all. They are absolutely obsessed with zerging every possible corner of a land mass with settlers though.

The new diplomacy system also seems to be a problem. I like the personality it gives the leaders, but it causes them to be too one-note. If you don't get a civ that is predetermined to seek a culture victory, no one else will even build a single theater district. It's insane. I had to be careful not to win another culture victory while going for a space victory because I was the only one getting great person points in culture. That didn't stop them from constantly begging me for my great works though. Gah.

And while they never pose an actual threat to me, they are more than happy to seek out barbarian camps far more than I've ever seen them do in a past Civ. So even with the cool new raiding mechanic, I barely am ever perturbed by barbarians at all.

Originally Posted by Dramadon

The spying thing annoys me a bit. I get really tired of having to tell my spies where to counterspy every 10 turns or so. I really want an option to just tell them to counterspy and then have them do it until I tell them to stop doing it.

I'm with you on this. I'll usually only make one or two and just deal with whatever attacks actually get through. It's an interesting mechanic but too fiddly. I don't want to deal with it.

I have a similar problem with diplomatic visibility. In theory that's incredibly useful, but in practice its just spam that you eventually learn to ignore.

Re: Civ 6 Nerds How do we feel about the game?

Originally Posted by Wool

I like the personality it gives the leaders, but it causes them to be too one-note. If you don't get a civ that is predetermined to seek a culture victory, no one else will even build a single theater district. It's insane.

What sort of win they will try to get is determined as part of the random seed, as far as I can tell. I play the exact same start conditions, over and over, with the same civs in a "true start location" world map (YnAMP), and they will change which victory condition they want from game to game. Some games, no theatres, other games, millions of theatres. The game used to have a notification if you had enough diplomatic visibility with a civ when they'd change win conditions, but I have yet to see it in the expansion.

Re: Civ 6 Nerds How do we feel about the game?

In response to Wool, what difficulty setting do you have it on? I usually play Prince (although i probably should move to harder levels) and they declare war on me all the time. Hell, the latest game everyone in the game declared war on me. And then, after I had negotiated peace with them they keep denouncing me as a war monger. So then I nuked them to shut them up. Hell, if they are going to treat me like a warmonger then I might as well live up to the label.

Another thing, I hardly notice diplomatic spam anymore. I probably should, although I don't. I guess it would be nice to be able to throw some filters up there because I do like knowing if another civ is building a wonder and knowing if cities are being taken over gives me an idea of who wins a war, but I don't give a shit if India is in a trade agreement with Russia or if England cleared out a barbarian camp.

As for the expansion, the loyalty mechanic is growing on me. I miss being able to send a settler off to some far off land to form a city but it does make it a bit more realistic and I like being able to culturally flip a city. I'm not sure if you could do it before or not but now there is a much more clear mechanic for it.

Re: Civ 6 Nerds How do we feel about the game?

Couldn't before, can now. The big limitation is trying to conquer a foreign continent. If you don't knock out a second city fast, the loyalty pressure can make your first city flip before you can take sufficient actions to stabilize it. Some people have already found ways to exploit that, though, like playing as England and farming it for a free unit every time it flips to free city.

Re: Civ 6 Nerds How do we feel about the game?

Either Prince or King. I don't like the massive bonuses the AI gets on higher difficulties. By that point the only way to win is to minmax a build order or something. I tried Emperor last and went from getting most of the wonders and all of the great people to getting none of either. I ended up massively out-teched even by the Civs I beat in wars earlier in the game.

There's a trick to how warmongering works that may or may not break the game for you once you realize it. The AI doesn't like it when you take cities, even if you were not the one to declare war. To get around this, give any cities you take back and ask for different kinds of reparations. Including other cities. If you take cities through peace talks (and the AI is incredibly willing to do this), you don't get hit with warmongering penalties. Honestly you don't even have to take their cities, just destroy their invading army.

Civs seem most likely to hate you if you go against one of their two preset diplomatic attitudes. Norway hates you if you have a weak navy. China hates you if you build wonders. France hates you if you have no spies. Etc. You can do other things to make them less likely to declare war, though it's not a guarantee because a friendly civ will still get dragged into joint war offers by someone who hates you. I think trade routes help, and might explain why my first game everyone left me alone as I was going heavy on trade routes that game.

As an example of how silly diplomacy works in this game: just about every AI likes it when you liberate cities to their original founders. That includes any cities you liberate from THEM that they had conquered. After I won a city state in the peace talks and liberated it, the civ that attacked me started to like me. After I gave them free whales they decided to be my friends for life. Amusingly enough, America then told me how happy they were with me for preserving the peace while also asking for a joint war.

P.S. Every other civ in the game constantly asking me for a joint war with Ghandi when I'm nowhere near them has got to be a deliberate trap right? The AI is trying to kill my amenities through war weariness and doesn't actually plan to send any troops right?

Re: Civ 6 Nerds How do we feel about the game?

Wool:

I agree with the harder settings. It's not much fun when the computer gets to cheat a lot and it's only slightly more fun when I get to cheat a lot. But really, blowing the shit out of the Aztec's archers with my modern tank is only fun the first few times. Ok, it's fun all the time but it is tedious and kind of not the point of the game.

Interesting bit on the warmongering stuff. I'd try that, but the price for having the nerve to declare war on me is at least one of your cities...although I can try to trade other cities instead. Then again, being a warmonger isn't really that bad if you take out the civ or two that would normally outpace you early in the game before they are too far ahead to catch up to.